What is Yearbook
A yearbook is a type of book published annually. It is to record, highlight, and commemorate the past school year. Many high schools, colleges, and elementary and middle schools have yearbook.
I was the head designer of the yearbook at Almaty International School in Kazakhstan from 2016 to 2018.
There I had a designer team of 6–8 new people. The goal for us is to create the designs and actually develop them into real things using Adobe InDesign.
This is the sample we made to check in real life whether our CMYK colors, opacities, and colour mixes are appropriate.
Challenges
The biggest challenge we faced was to actually get used to the software. There were many people who were not familiar with computers. (Some of us did not know what Ctrl C and Ctrl V) Throughout the fall semester, we went through a series of tutorials and workshops made by me to practise our skills. Throughout the winter semester, based on the design framework we have established, we worked on actually designing the book.
What have we learned?
We have learned the power of Adobe. It has great tools like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and After Effect. During the production, all of the software mentioned was used. At that time, we were not aware of what we were doing, but we were developing a yearbook using an agile model. Communication between team members and other departments was very important to erase misunderstandings and save a lot of time and money.